American Chocolate Week (recipe)

By Hannah Kaminsky, Bittersweet Blog – Leave it to America to come up with the most random times to declare food-centric holidays, and then tell no one about it. A brief search of google revealed that we do indeed have numerous dates designated to specific edible items, be them baked goods, sweets, savory dishes, individual spices… You name it, and I’ll bet you anything we have an official day in which to celebrate it.

Perusing various lists reveals some discrepancies with the most obscure ones, but one special observance kept reappearing, drawing upon my curiosity more than anything else. Apparently, we are in the thick of American Chocolate Week, although there seems to be a number of other random days named as “National Chocolate Day,” in addition to “National Chocolate Chip Day,” “National Chocolate-Covered Raisin Day,” “National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day”… But hey, who can quibble over petty details when it comes to chocolate? If we get another reason to indulge our inner-chocoholic, then the more holidays involving chocolate, the better!

As chocolate is perhaps the most popular flavor when it comes to dessert, I’m sure that everyone already has volumes of recipes that include this supposed aphrodisiac. What really irks me, personally, is that all too many home bakers think that using some cheap milk chocolate will satisfy that familiar craving. The end result is lack-luster if not downright disappoint, and those who are lactose-intolerant or vegan must stand idly by and pretend that they didn’t really want a slice of your chocolate cake, anyway. Trust me, 9 times out of 10, this statement is a bald-faced lie.

Now, I offer you a new alternative to add to your repetior that almost everyone can enjoy. To adapt this recipe so that it can fit into even the most challenging dietary restrictions, you can find some helpful conversions for gluten-free flour mixes here to replace the white flour, and to accomodate those with diabetes, the sugar can be replaced by 2 Tablespoons of stevia leaf powder, according to this conversion chart. Depending on the severity of this condition however, this may not be enough to bring the glucose-level to an acceptable amount, so please check with a doctor if this might be an issue.

Triple Chocolate Cupcakes

1 1/2 Cups AP Flour

1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder

1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil

1 Cup Chocolate Soymilk

2 Teaspoon Vinegar

1/2 – 3/4 Cup Dark Chocolate Chips, Lightly Tossed in Flour

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and line medium cupcake tins with papers.

Begin by mixing all of the dry ingredients a medium size bowl. Combine all the wet ingredients in separate bowl, EXCEPT VINEGAR. Slowly add your wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients while stir until everything is combined, but be careful not to overmix – A few lumps are okay. Gently fold in chocolate chips, and now add the vinegar and quickly stir in. Pour batter into the pans and immediately put them in the oven. Bake for approximately 14 – 18 minutes. Allow them to cool in the pan for a few minutes before moving them to a cooling rack – I couldn’t find one sufficient at the time, so I simply placed mine on newspaper as a make-shift cooling rake until I was ready to decorate.

To top it all off, you could pull together a simple ganache in no time, so with chocolate in coming from the cocoa powder, soymilk, and chips, that would turn these into quadrouple chocolate cupcakes! Talk about a reason to celebrate, no matter if chocolate week has truly been declared by some official source, or just some chocoholic looking for a good time.